This page is part of the "tools" section of a site, Plato and his dialogues, dedicated to developing a new interpretation of Plato's dialogues. The "tools" section provides historical and geographical context (chronology, maps, entries on characters and locations) for Socrates, Plato and their time.
For more information on the structure of entries and links available from them, read the notice at the beginning of the index of persons and locations.

Prometheus, along with his brother Epimetheus, were two of the
four sons of the Titan Iapetus (a son of Uranus--Heavens-- and Gæa--Earth--,
and thus elder brother of Cronus) and the Oceanide Clymene (or Asia, a daughter
of Ocean and Tethys in both cases). Thus they were cousins of Zeus, who was
the son of their uncle Cronus. Their brothers were Menoetius (who was so proud
and rude that Zeus struck him with lightning and plunged him into Tartarus,
as he did with his father and all the Titans) and Atlas
(see Hesiod's Theogony,
507, sq). Prometheus was as shrewd as his brother Epimetheus was clumsy.
Prometheus became the father of Deucalion, the first
man, with his wife Celæno, or Clymene (in traditions where she is not
mentioned as his mother). He was also sometime given as the father of Hellen,
the ancestor of all Greek tribes, in the place of his son Deucalion. In fact,
in some traditions, he was even said to have manufactured the first men from
clay. He was the benefactor of mankind that he protected from the jealousy of
Zeus and the blunders of his brother.
During a solemn sacrifice, Prometheus deceived Zeus by asking him to pick his share between two shares of the ox he had slaughtered, the other being for men.
In one, Prometheus had put the meat and entrails hidden behind the belly of the animal, and in the other, the bare bones hidden behind white fat.
Zeus chose the later, leaving the former to men.
But when he saw what he had taken and what he had lost, he became jealous of men and withdrew them the fire.
But Prometheus came to the rescue of mankind in stealing fire from Hephæstus' forge.
In reprisal, Zeus asked Hephæstus and Athena to manufacture, with a bit
of help from all other gods, a creature that would be the source of all evils
for men, a woman (the first one indeed), named Pandora (a name meaning
in Greek "the all-encompassing gift"). Pandora was so beautiful that, no sooner
had Epimetheus seen her that, forgetting the order from his brother Prometheus
never to accept a gift from Zeus, he fell in love with her and made her his
wife. As soon as she was on earth, Pandora, seeing a jar that was there and
devoured by curiosity, opened it. Halas ! The jar was holding all the evils,
and they immediately spread over mankind. Another tradition presents the jar
as Pandora's wedding gift to Epimetheus, that was holding all goods. But, because
Pandora opended it, all goods escaped and returned to the gods, except hope,
that was at the bottom and could not escape before Pandora put the lid back
on the jar (see Hesiod's Theogony,
507-616 ; Works
and Days, 42-105).
Prometheus' punishment was to be chained to a huge rock in Caucasus where an
eagle would come every day to eat his liver, that would reconstitue immediately.
And Zeus vowed never to unchain Prometheus from his rock. Yet, when Heracles
happened to pass by, he killed the eagle and unchained Prometheus, who told
him how to get the Golden Apples from the garden of the Hesperides. Zeus was
proud of this deed of his son, but, so as not to renege on his vow, he ordered
Prometheus to always wear a ring that would be made out of the steel from his
chains and a piece of the rock he had been tied to.
Toward that time, the Centaur Chiron, wounded by Heracles' arrows, wished to
die. But, because he was immortal, he could do so only if he could find some
mortal that would take over his immortality. Prometheus accepted the deal,
and thus became immortal, with Zeus' blessing at last, because, owing to his
gift of prophecy, he had warned him that, if he had a son with the Nereid
Thetis, with whom he was then in love, this son would become stronger than
him and unseat him (no longer courted by the gods, Thetis later became Achilles'
mother).
It is also Prometheus who warned his son Deucalion, who had by then married Pyrrha, the daughter of Epimetheus and Pandora, of the impending flood Zeus was planning to destroy mankind, and gave him the means to escape the disaster.

Plato puts in the mouth of Protagoras
a reworked myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus in the dialogue that bears his
name (Protagoras,
320d-322d), in which Pandora is out and Epimetheus' clumsiness is responsible
for man's weakness, while Prometheus is responsible for bringing them fire and
the arts ("technai") stollen from Hephæstus and Athena, before
Zeus intervenes to instruct Hermes to bring them justice and a sense of shame
that would make it possible for them to associate and live in cities. Prometheus
is also mentioned in the final myth of last judgment in the Gorgias as
responsible for the ability that men once had to know the hour of their death
ahead of time (Gorgias,
523d-e). Again, in the myth of the Statesman about the golden age
of Cronus and the time when the earth is left to itself, in a reference to god
given gifts to men, Prometheus is mentioned as the one who gave men fire (Statesman,
274c). And in the Philebus, Socrates attributes to "some sort
of Prometheus" the godly gift of "a most dazzling fire" that allows
men to partake in the knowledge of the one and the many (Philebus,
16c).

Quotations from theses pages are authorized provided
they mention the author's name and source of quotation (including date
of last update). Copies of these pages must not alter the text and must
leave this copyright mention visible in full.